My wife and I recently went to the market at Old Strathcona. We parked a couple of blocks away and made our way to the market on snow-covered, slippery sidewalks and roadways but noticed that the bike lane was in pristine condition, cleaned down to the asphalt with not a cyclist in sight.

In fact, a lot of people took to walking on the bike lane as it was the safest surface in the area. I’m fine with bike lanes but when you consider that 99 per cent of the people at the market came by car or on foot, our priorities seem to be distorted.

Jack Jones, Edmonton

Thinking outside the blue bag

My crazy just-might-work solution? Give everyone free blue boxes that have separate spaces for each product. Have volunteers/paid staff trailer-bike the boxes to eco-station-style bins on each block with a limit of one box per household. Any extra can be bought/blue bagged.

No volunteers or space on the block? Have the recycle-truck drivers pick up. The benefits are far less mixing of plastics, paper and steel; no more blue bags to buy or to rip open; way less fuel used by trucks and purer product arriving at the plant.

The purer product can be sold at higher prices to recyclers. They’ll be begging for our product instead of the other way around.

Claude de Blois, Edmonton

Trudeau should repay taxpayers for trip

If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you have to give it back. It’s a life lesson most of us have learned by kindergarten. Unfortunately, it’s a lesson that appears to have been lost on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The prime minister is refusing to repay more than $200,000 for a taxpayer-funded trip he took to the billionaire Aga Khan’s private Caribbean island.

It’s a trip that Canada’s federal ethics commission ruled was illegal. The commissioner ruled that Trudeau broke federal law when he took that posh family vacation that included being chauffeured to the island on a private helicopter.

Scores of Canadians are demanding Trudeau pay taxpayers back for that trip. I’ve heard that loud and clear from my constituents in Edmonton Griesbach. Our Conservative official Opposition has pushed for this repeatedly in the House of Commons in question period.

When other members of Trudeau’s team — including a cabinet minister — charged expenses to taxpayers that weren’t allowed, they had to pay back the money. It seems he thinks there’s one set of rules for him and another set of rules for everybody else.

Kerry Diotte, MP for Edmonton Griesbach

Shameful decision on City Hall pool

It seems that the motto that the mayor and municipal councillors in Edmonton have adopted is this: All for us (high wages, benefits, big pensions, expense accounts, et cetera) and nothing for children and parents living below the poverty line, seniors, persons with a disability, et cetera).

For example, there is no money for to improve a small water pool in front of City Hall and thus allow these children and their parents to wade in the water during summer months. Shame on the mayor and councillors.

Serge Boudreault, Edmonton

Behind the scenes of the B.C.-Alberta dispute

Please inform your readers as to how B.C. eco-activists are funded by millions of U.S. dollars to campaign against proposed oil pipelines, under the guise of environmental safety.

These actions benefit the U.S. by land-locking Canadian oil exports. Dogwood alone claimed to have contributed to mayoral victories in Vancouver, Burnaby, Victoria, Sooke, Esquimalt, and Courtney, and, that turn-out was up 43 per cent in the ridings where Dogwood was active.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Prime Minister Trudeau to put any pressure on Horgan to comply with the federal ruling on the Trans Mountain pipeline. Trudeau doesn’t want to ruffle the feathers of his 18 Liberal ridings in BC. He needs all those votes and more, if he hopes to win the next election.

Please make your readers aware of what is going on behind the scenes of the Notley-B.C. standoff.

M.R. Leithead, Bawlf

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